Life Cycle Assessment of Roads: Material and Process Related Energy Savings

The need for climate change mitigation calls for significant actions to match the sustainable development goals and, in this context, road construction and management play a relevant role (cf. EU Green Public Procurement Criteria for Road Design, Construction and Maintenance and Environmental Product Declarations - EPD). In such a context, the role of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is broadly recognized as a tool to quantify sustainability of processes and systems. This study aims at calculating the life-cycle energy and carbon footprint of a typical Italian urban road, including materials production, transportation, construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation. The LCA approach is applied according to the ISO 14040 regulations series. Authors assess the life cycle energy and carbon footprint of several alternative scenarios based on mixture type and reuse/recycle of waste materials as well as developing dominance analyses. The main contribution of this study is to provide a systemic approach for energy and carbon footprint assessment for the sake of all stakeholders, in order to support the development of new models of low-energy consumption and innovative production models.